From The Indianapolis News, Monday, December 25, 1916: The Christmas spirit of Irvington was not chilled by the cold breeze blowing early Christmas Eve as a large crowd stood in the snow on the Irvington School grounds for the lighting of the first Irvington community Christmas tree. The twenty-five foot Norway spruce glowed and twinkled with 100 scarlet and white electric lights as a boys’ choir sang “Holy Night” and other Christmas songs. The tree will be lighted on the other nights of the week and choirs of the Catholic, Christian, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Episcopal churches will sing each night until New Year’s Eve when the choirs will unite in a grand chorus. The Christmas tree celebration in Irvington is being conducted under the auspices of the Parent-Teachers’ Association, which is being assisted by the Merchants’ Association of Irvington.
From The Indianapolis News, Friday, January 5, 1917: Indianapolis is casting off great city waste, besides sewage, that reeks with money values. Waste that goes into rubbish barrels in a modern city is an undeveloped gold mine. Indianapolis recognized the value in garbage a few years ago and as a result great quantities of oils, greases and fertilizers are rolling out of the garbage to form the basis for soaps, lubricants and agricultural nutrients thereby saving the city $15,000 (2015: $280,759) a year in garbage disposal. In Indianapolis rubbish is carried off to dumps, while in Pittsburgh all of this waste goes through a great human picking machine on a wide belt conveyor. Pickers sort the rubbish for paper, paper boxes, rags, bottles, glass, tin cans, brass, copper, iron and other salvageable items that are then sold to various markets.